


One Day Robots Will Cry (Real Tears)

by orphan_account



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, FOB still happens, Fantasy AU, Fluff, Futuristic, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I don't know how to explain but you'll get it by the end of this chapter, M/M, Magical Realism, Robot AU, idk how to tag just read, like 10 years in the future but advanced technology, listen this isn't the vaguely non con sex robot type fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-08-09 11:31:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7800175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i> “Dad!” Pete screamed, running into his father's legs and wrapping his arms around them tightly. “This is the absolutely completely bestest thing in the entire world!”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>The small robot, silent until now, spoke up. “No, I am Patrick,” it corrected.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lesbianpatrick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianpatrick/gifts).



> for my homie @pansexualpancakes for writing me a super awesome au that you should all check out ;) okay enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> writing here is probably a little rushed because I just wanted to get to the interesting part! the next chapter will be better and the plot really starts there :)

Pete Wentz was nine years, three hundred and sixty four days old, and he was eavesdropping. Using a glass he'd stolen from the kitchen, he leaned against his parents’ bedroom door and listened intently.

“Peter, you can't wrap it up,” his mom was saying, “That seems a little… I don't know.”

“Darling, you know it isn't _actually_ a human, don't you?” his father replied with what sounded like a smile.

Pete felt himself twitch with excitement. He couldn't even imagine what he was going to get. A life size doll? A realistic action figure? A _puppy_? That was all Pete had time to think. Panicking as he heard footsteps approach the door, Pete scarpered back to his room.

He barely slept at all that night, wishing he could so that tomorrow would be there faster, even as his leg jiggled with excitement.

***

Pete still had a mouthful of cake, his newly ten-year-old attention span having lead him to almost forget about his parents’ odd conversation last night.  
“Pete, honey,” his mom began brightly, “Your dad has a little surprise for you.”

Pete sat bold upright. How could he have _forgotten_? He'd been distracted trying to play every single videogame he'd gotten for his birthday all at once. Not now, though; he scrambled from his chair  and barrelled towards the door fast enough to receive a disapproving look from his mother.

In the kitchen, his father blocked the doorway. To no avail, Pete desperately tried to peer around him. He was mumbling something about how patience was a virtue and he couldn't wrap the present up, but Pete wasn't listening.

“ _Patrick_?” his mom called, enunciating it oddly clearly.

  
Then there was a whirring, clicking sound, and _then_ \- Pete gasped out loud. A tiny blonde head appeared around his father’s side.

“It's just an old prototype I brought from work, they didn't need it anymore…” his dad said anxiously, wringing his hands in front of him. Pete didn't care at _all_.

“Dad!” Pete screamed, running into his father's legs and wrapping his arms around them tightly. “This is the absolutely completely bestest thing in the entire _world_!”  
  
The small robot, silent until now, spoke up. “No, I am Patrick,” it corrected, to the laughter of Pete's entire family. Amusingly, when ‘Patrick’ noticed their laughter, he attempted to mimic it; a harsh, synthesised laugh burst from his mouth, but it was music to Pete's ears.

“Dad, he's the _best_ ,” Pete exclaimed. Patrick was just smaller than Pete - he looked like he would be in Pete's year or the year below at school. He wasn't as elegantly designed as some of the more recent bots Pete's father brought home now - more like something he recognised from two years ago.

It's- his hair was obviously synthetic, too shiny under the light, and even the cut was choppy like they'd let an intern do it. His perfect pink bow lips, though also obviously plastic, belonged on a doll. Or a model.

His skin was matte and hard under Pete's touch, not squishy like skin should be. But he was warm enough from the workings of machinery inside him and his chest rose and fell like he was breathing. Pete remembered watching his father design that pump. He'd even built one himself: it had made an awkward wheezing sound but it had worked.

He grasped the robot’s tiny hand and smiled.  
“You're going to be my best friend,” he told Patrick, dragging him upstairs to show him around.

***

Pete was fourteen. He was wiser to a lot of things now. Through overheard fights and phone calls, he knew that a lot of the work that went on at his father's lab, including Patrick, was sort of _illegal_.

Not on the same level as murder, but they shouldn't have been delving into experimental waters like that with no permits. Some of what they'd been beginning to experiment with, post-Patrick, like transplanting human organs and pieces of brains (from reliable and legal sources, which was _one_ good thing at least) was downright shady.

Most of their lower employees were badly treated and two factories they owned in China and Thailand had failed multiple human rights exams on their workers. Yet nothing had happened to them or the people who ran them, probably because of enormous bribes.

Pete's father just wanted to help create intelligent tech for the next generation to actually experience his own childhood dreams, but he was quickly getting caught up in the whirlwind of dodgy dealings.

Patrick was ever as naïve as a walking computer could be. He lay on Pete's bed and blinked unnaturally blue eyes at him as Pete performed an increasing number of repairs. He felt sick to think about it, but Patrick was made in 2021, making him six years old.

For experimental tech like him, that was a long lifespan. And of course he was still nine, physically. Pete tried to update his code where his knowledge allowed, editing out things like the feature where he prevented Pete from using non child friendly things like radiators and ovens, proclaiming, “Caution, hot! Supervision from an adult required.”

But none of that could avoid the fact that Patrick wasn't going to last forever. Pete knew it was slightly tragic, his desperate clinging to his outdated robot who could barely hold the most basic of conversations.

But he was _Patrick_ , and he was familiar, and his animated smile was sort of loveable, and he'd learnt to drop his voice to a whisper at night so Pete's parents didn't know he still got the robot to read him bedtime stories, and he brought Pete his pills every morning with a glass of water in a simple gesture that made Pete feel so cared for.

“Pete, sweetie, we can install his save data into a _much_ newer model,” his mom had begged at Christmas, when Patrick gliched on a Christmas carol and repeated the world “snow” for half an hour before Pete's dad could restart him.

Pete just shook his head furiously, grasping Patrick's hand tightly. He knew he wasn't supposed to be this reliant on the robot - he was basically a children's toy - but Patrick felt like _home_. He didn't know what he'd do the day Patrick finally crashed.

***

Pete woke up to a scream.

To his half asleep brain, the scream didn't come from any member of his family. Yet it was oddly familiar. When he sat up, he saw Patrick, standing on his charging port. Full of confusion, he watched the robot nervously yank his feet free of the plugs on the port.

“Patrick?” he asked sleepily.

“Oh my _god_ ,” Patrick hissed. Pete startled. He'd never heard Patrick speak so realistically, or use such an informal phrase. His heart was already pounding when Patrick turned around, and Pete screamed too.

Patrick covered his face with his hands and whimpered. _Patrick_ , who most times couldn't even understand a _knock knock joke._ Pete was freaking out.  
“I'm sorry!” Patrick burst out, scrabbling away from Pete as the older boy climbed out of his bed and made his way towards Patrick.

“Shh, it's okay,” Pete murmured. When Patrick stilled, Pete peeled the boy's hands gently away from his face. His lips were still unfairly perfectly shaped, but they were soft under Pete's touch. Patrick's skin gave where Pete gripped his arm, four white dots appearing after he let go. His eyes had lost their unnatural intensity, fading from bright blue to a muted greenish.

He was unmistakably real.

“I don't know what happened,” he whispered, face creasing in the most realistic way possible.

“I do,” Pete realised. It was exactly what happened in that primitive 2D film that Pete's father once forced him to watch, but that time it happened with a puppet. “Patrick you're… _real_.”

***

Pete crept into his parents’ bedroom, whispering to Patrick to wait outside. Only his mom was there, his dad probably working. The digital clock flashed 1 A.M.

His mom was awake, clicking away on her tablet. It lit her eyes eerily as she sat up.  
“Oh, honey, it's _late_. What's wrong?”

Pete blinked through the darkness. He wasn't sure whether to grin or be terrified.  
“It's Patrick, mom. He's-”

She got up from the bed, wrapping Pete in her arms. “Oh, baby,” she sighed sympathetically, “Did he finally…?”

Pete shook his head. “What? _No_! Mom, it's- seriously, you have to come see!” He clamped a hand over his mouth, curbing his babbling. He was still worried he'd just had a vivid dream and they'd find Patrick just as half-lifeless as ever. Now that he'd seen the real Patrick, he didn't know if he could survive without.

He followed his mother to the doorway, where Patrick was hiding shyly. When Dale came close to him, he turned away.  
“Apologies, Madam,” he stuttered, trying to imitate his own robotic mannerism.

“Patrick, no.” Pete laid a hand on his arm, encouraging. “You can show Mom. She'll be able to help.”  
Patrick blinked, wiping his bangs out of his eyes and swivelling to face Dale. Even in the glow of her bedside lamp, she squinted in amazement at Patrick.

“Pete…?”

“Mom, he's like Pinocchio!” Pete exclaimed giddily, throwing his arm around Patrick's shoulder.

“Oh my _goodness_. This is… Patrick, hi! I'm Dale, Pete's mom.”  
Patrick inclined his head. “I know.”

She clasped her hands together. “Gosh, your smile is so realistic. Oh, I'm sorry dear, I'm just a little overwhelmed. I can't believe it's Patrick. I remember the day Peter brought you home, I-” She stopped, her expression darkening suddenly. “You can't tell your father, Pete, or he'll take Patrick back for testing.”

Both Pete and Patrick shuddered.  
“We won't,” they said in unison.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last "backstory" chapter. In the next chapter we hit the main plot and see how Patrick's doing! and yeah, angst. but there'll be a happy ending, I promise. Also, I'm aware I changed tense here but it's because the previous chapter was in their childhood and the rest are in the proper timeline!

Patrick is seventeen. He and Pete were jointly amazed when they first compared photographs and realised Patrick had aged for the first time.

Pete's dad now lives in an apartment out in New York, to be closer to his lab’s new headquarters. Pete misses his dad like hell, but when he does come back to visit and he's tense and hollow eyed, Pete wishes he'd stayed away.

Especially because he loses Patrick for the whole time he's there, to the mindless robot he has to pretend to be for Peter Senior’s benefit. In his absence, Pete's mom has practically adopted Patrick as her own and their family photos are now littered with Patrick's face, hidden behind a baseball cap.

The spare room was immediately redecorated, her entire allowance for the month spent on proper clothes and toys for the kid. She'd even insisted on him receiving a proper education and used her position as a school secretary to get Patrick into a good school despite his having little to no documentation.

Patrick's junior prom is next month. He's taking a girl he met at school - Dale cried when she heard Patrick had his first girlfriend. Pete's signed up to be a chaperone and harass Patrick to no end. Honestly, he felt an odd pang when he met Patrick's date. After the years where Patrick was his and his only, he still gets an unjustifiable twinge sometimes when Patrick proves how little he really needs Pete.

Pete's twenty-one, but he lives close enough to his college not to consider moving out. Not that he'd want to anyway. He wouldn't trade lying across the couch, watching Patrick's hands fly over his completely correct calculus homework for _anything_.

There are still little oddities in Patrick's character sometimes, like his positively extraordinary calculation skills and the fact that he always has a piece of trivia to share, and the two little charging ports in both his feet that he still has to be constantly reminded to keep covered up. He sleeps just like anyone else does and refuses to test if they still work - the one time he tried, it hurt like hell and he had to stop.

Patrick rests his head in Pete's lap.   
“Sometimes I'm scared people will just _know_ ,” he says suddenly. “Darcy keeps… I don't know, like,  trying to get past making out. I feel like if I even take my _shirt_  off, she'll know.”

Pete sighs, carding his fingers through Patrick's hair. “You could fuck her with your shirt, and socks, on?” he suggests meanly. He doesn't know why he feels like this. Patrick frowns and rolls over to face Pete with a nasty glare.  
“Hey, that's not what I was saying. You're gross,” he sighs.

***

Patrick really likes music. That's the unexpected thing, except really it isn't. He devours music with robotic intent, analysing Pete's entire family's CD and virtual music collections in alphabetical order, taking apart every song with mathematical precision.

Once he's apparently stored all that in his brain forever, he starts begging Pete to take him to the local music store, where he watches the record player spin for hours, revelling in its vintage crackling. He still doesn't like to go out in crowded places alone unless he has to, maybe because of all the days when he couldn't even leave the house. There's some things you'll never be really comfortable with unless you've been exposed to it from an early age.

Patrick teaches himself instrument after instrument. Some, like drums, he takes up a cause with and is determined to learn ‘manually’, which he does, and excels at. Others, like the bass, he decides are necessary but not that enjoyable and has them mastered in a week, which makes Pete suspect that it's coming from the same place as the math and the trivia.

Pete hears him singing, too, and pretends not to. It's a shock at first, compared to the rusty, synthesised noises that _used_ to come out of his mouth. He sounds like a kid at first, but as he grows he gets better. He's not exactly operatic material, but he's good enough that he could front a band if he wanted to. Pete's proud of him.

When Pete starts being in more serious bands, Patrick almost always comes to see him. Pete sees the longing in his eyes when he looks at the stage, but the most Pete ever convinces Patrick to do is fill in on the drums at a one off show when he's sixteen.   
“I felt like everyone was looking at me,” Patrick says afterwards. “Maybe because they know, maybe because I just sucked.”

He won't hear anything else about it until he comes home one evening and tells Pete casually, “I met a guy today.”

“Oh yeah?” Pete hums. Patrick is in his lap again, sprawled across Pete like he doesn't know how to do anything else. Pete feels a fierce surge of protectiveness, for as much as Patrick has grown into his humanity, he still has an edge of uncomprehending naïveté, an unguarded innocence, and Pete wants to make sure that it never goes away.

He feels Patrick nod. “Yep. His name is Joe Trohman, I think?”  
Pete makes a curious sound. “Joe? I know him. I think you've seen him play once, when I took you to… uh, I don't know what they were calling themselves then. It probably had ‘death’ in the name.”

Patrick nods, his sharp chin digging into Pete's thigh. Joe is only about Patrick's age, but he's good, and he's fast becoming as staple on the local scene as Pete is. In fact, Pete distinctly remembers discussing with Joe about starting a new softcore project to kill time this summer.

“I know,” Patrick says with a smile, “We were talking about music, and he was like ‘you should meet my guy Pete, we're going to start another band together. I should see if he'll let you audition’. So I told him I already kind of knew you, but he made a knowing look like he didn't believe me and I was just another rabid fan.” Patrick laughs at the ridiculousness of that particular idea. Pete laughs too. If anyone is the rabid fan, it's Pete.

“Anyway,” he continues, “Heads up, you're going to interview me to be your drummer tomorrow.” They both laugh again.  
“I don't know if you'll be good enough,” Pete jokes, rubbing his knuckles against Patrick's forehead until he squeals angrily.

***

Patrick is nineteen, he's playing his first ever sold out show, and he thinks he might've fucking made it. He turns his head to grin at Pete, and Pete smiles back. There's a contented squeeze in his stomach and then he launches into the bridge.

“To think, I was a plastic toy ten years ago,” he whispers in Pete's ear after the show. He's straddling Pete's lap with his sweaty hair pressed against Pete's forehead like it's normal, but Pete's never had the heart to tell him it's not. He'd sort of assumed Patrick would notice the lack of other guys sprawled out on top of each other in the world and learn that for himself.

Pete kisses Patrick's sweaty temple, because Patrick won't stop him and he can't help himself.   
“You were never that,” he says. “Not to me.”

***

It's kind of a bitter relief when the dodgy laboratory that created Patrick goes down when he's twenty-five. Except for the blurry photograph leaked from the police of a prototype robot, that's spread to almost every social media platform, pictured beside Patrick's first baby photo. It's the one Dale snapped on his very first real night, his hands nervously tugging on his fuzzy pajamas as he hesitantly smiles at the camera.

It reads ‘#confirmed’ and Patrick freaks out and turns up at Pete's house at 3 A.M. when he reads it. Pete just laughs and laughs.   
“God, they're fucking clever,” he snorts, pouring Patrick a mug of coffee.

Pete's read the article too, with the names of the heads of the operation censored to protect their families (thank _god_ , Pete can't deal with _that_ media storm, and if someone with the last name Wentz was involved _and_ the robot Patrick lookalike, people might've started to connect dots.)

He feels guilty as hell for it, but Pete's kind of relieved when his dad visits on bail to tell Pete and his mom that he's probably going to be in jail for a while. Patrick, whose circuits would've given out years ago, is stuffed in the closet.

But it takes the pressure ofrom Pete's shoulders that his dad will look closely at a magazine article about his son’s band and realise that he recognises their vocalist. Pete's been hoping that the age difference will keep him from noticing, and the fact that he's managed so far to make enough excuses that they haven't met.

It was Pete's idea to give Patrick the sucky, unpronounceable name with terrible initials to top it off. Patrick hates him for it, but he can't deny that it's a good red herring to throw people off. If someone was a robot with a made up name, they wouldn't choose a last name that could easily be mispronounced as German for idiot. They definitely wouldn't pick the minitials PMS to boot.

That night, after Patrick gets scared by the frighteningly accurate meme, they sleep tangled up in Pete's bed together. Pete still doesn't have the heart to tell Patrick that it's not normal, but he thinks that Patrick knows by now, anyway. He's just too shaken to care, judging by the quiet whimpering noises he makes in his sleep.

***

Pete and Patrick had always fought. But in the last year, everything has started to come to a head at breakneck tempo.

Pete's going through his shittiest break up yet, and to deal with it he's drinking more than he should and taking it out on Patrick. Patrick's been becoming even more of a shut-in in return, and Pete thinks he's angrier about his increasing weight gain than he's letting on. He'll be almost silent for days and then he'll _explode_ at the smallest comment and not emerge from his bunk for hours.

Pete's worried about him, but he doesn't have one brain cell he can spare for anyone else's problems at the moment. On top of that, they're still doing sporadic touring and trying to write an album.

Patrick has some kind of martyr complex and is determined to do everything himself. On top of his overbearing control over the writing process and his tyrannical presence, stalking through the recording booths to obsess over tiny details in everyone else's playing, Pete found out he's even been coming back to the studio after everyone had left to lay down bass and drum tracks where he thought Pete and Andy hadn't done it satisfactorily.

That leads to the fifth screaming match in as many days. Pete doesn't even care - maybe Patrick is a better bass player than him - but it's the fucking nerve of it. Lately he can't even _breathe_ without Patrick telling him he's doing it wrong.

“What is you fucking _problem_?” he screeches, after his third beer.

“Maybe if you actually _practised_ instead of lying around feeling sorry for yourself and acting like alcohol is your only friend, I wouldn't have had to! I was doing it for the band,” Patrick retorts.

Pete fucking snaps. “Oh yeah, because you do so much practicing, don't you? Have you ever learnt anything yourself? Or do you just download a fucking ZIP file from the internet and then go around thinking you're better than everyone! Did you just download _soul singer.exe_ so you can go around with a musical god complex? Fucking... _composition 101?_ God, maybe Andy’s fills aren't _smooth_ enough or whatever-the-fuck, but at least he's actually playing them himself! you're just a big fucking liar, Patrick. Who's even in charge here, huh? Are you defective or something, because I think when my dad _built_ you, you were supposed to do what you were fucking _told_!”

Patrick flinches. Then he sinks to the floor. As soon as Pete hears the choked little sobs, he wishes he could take it all back. That wasn't what he meant at all. They do this all the time, cycles of rage while they wind each other up and then sulk in their rooms for a while before they're best friends again. Seeing Patrick actually _hurt_ , all the rage suckered out of him, makes Pete feel like the worst person in the world.

“Patrick, I-”

“I think you should go,” Patrick says heavily. “No, wait, _I'm_ the robot. I should go. I'll leave you in peace. Just _snap your fingers_ if you need anything, I'm _at your service_ ,” he drawls, dragging himself into his bunk.

Pete hears the loud, miserable sobs for an hour afterwards as they crescendo to miserable screaming and drop back down to quiet hiccups, and they make him feel dirty. Does Patrick actually believe Pete still thinks of him as a robot? Patrick's his best friend, Patrick's his _heart_. And Patrick made him really fucking rich. If anyone's the robot, it's Pete.

  
***

It was where they were headed anyway, but they split before the year’s up. After his first few attempts to apologise are met with stony silence, Pete gives up. He moves back to Chicago to be near his mom and plays with a couple of side projects there.

When he and Patrick both play Lollapalooza, Pere doesn't drink a drop all night so he can be sober on the off chance he bumps into Patrick. He doesn't.

Life without him is strange as hell, like when you lose a tooth and there's a small jolt every time your tongue glances over it and you realise it's gone. Pete's never really been apart from Patrick since he was ten.

He worries about Patrick a lot, too. At least Pete has a family who are there for him, family friends he's known since he was born, buddies he met in college. Patrick never really made more than acquaintances in high school, always too shy and a little weird without Pete. His only real friends are music friends he shares with Pete.

Seeing Patrick, with the way he started life, out in his own, playing shows with amazing enthusiasm, no one by his side or helping him with anything, makes Pete proud. That terrified little nine year old boy finally discovering his own independence. But it also makes him feel like someone's grinding his guts into a pulp. Patrick belongs next to him. He belongs next to Patrick.

He learns with a sick jolt that Patrick is playing all the instruments on his album himself, producing it too. "Nothing is synthesised," he says, "If you hear something, I really played that myself." It sounds like a creative cause of fighting back against electronic music, but Pete knows what he really means and why.

He buys all Patrick's music, promotes him shamelessly on his social media, and tries to forget that he was ever famous, busying himself decorating the new house and upping his number of therapy sessions and entertaining his mom’s friends. He watches a video on YouTube where Patrick demonstrates his yoga routine, and his feet are bare.

Pete curses his stupidity and watches the video to the end in case there are _any_ shots of the undersides of Patrick's feet, however fuzzy, in which case he’ll have to find a contact at the radio ration who posted it and get the video pulled.

Patrick makes it through the video without revealing the two small charging ports on his heels, but Pete still wants to kill him for doing that.

They've texted occasionally, nothing like their old friendship, just Pete congratulating Patrick on his album and Patrick asking how Pete's mom is doing. _He must miss her,_ Pete realises with a pang, _the closest thing he has to a mom, too._ It makes him feel selfish that he got her instead of Patrick, when he's himself and Patrick's _Patrick_.

 _u should b more careful than that,_ Pete texts, attaching a close up screenshot of Patrick's bare feet.

Patrick doesn't reply.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is really sad oops... next 2 chapters it'll probably get worse......: i'm awful, sorry!

Patrick stumbles down the stairs, hair ruffled from sleep. His leg makes a creaking noise like a piece of machinery that hasn't been oiled in a while and pain shoots briefly through his knee before it becomes completely numb. He laughs to himself, shaking his head.  
“Man, I'm getting old,” he mumbles.

He feels good. Today, he's going to ask his girlfriend of a few months to move in. He's never _technically_ said he loves her, but ‘you too’ totally counts, right? And he must love her, or he wouldn't be asking her to move in with him. It's not because he just feels desperately lonely at night in the empty house, or anything.

His knee is starting to put a damper on his smile, though. It seems to have to seized up, keeps making weird noises and moving kind of stiffly. At least his other leg is still in action, so he ends up using that to walk and just shuffling forwards without using the other knee except to drag it on like a zombie. Maybe he should see a doctor about that, but it's not a big deal right now so it'll have to wait.

It gets worse. He meets Jess for lunch and she rushes up to him, frowning.  
“Honey, what's wrong with your leg?” She asks gently as she helps him to sit down.

Patrick _wishes_ he could love her. But that's  _basically_ the same as love anyway, right? She's small and caring and she never forgets to text him to make sure he got home okay and her hands are soft and her skin is enough shades darker than Pete's that it doesn't remind Patrick of him. She doesn't straighten her hair like Pete does, either, she leaves it to curl naturally in a way Patrick finds beautiful but mostly just ‘unlike Pete’.

“I don't know,” Patrick says offhandedly, trying to stretch it and wincing at the loud creak it makes. “Woke up like this, guess I slept weird?”

“You need oiling,” Jess giggles, taking his hand across the table. Patrick flinches, covering it up with a fake wince of pain. Even just the misplaced joke, hitting awkwardly close to home, he feels a little ill.

It feels weird, never talking about it anymore. The little things he'd share with Pete that he has to keep to himself now. He calls Dale about once a week to check in, tries not to ask about Pete too much, but nothing comes close to before.

He flashes back suddenly, to about seventeen years ago. A memory drags itself to the forefront of his mind, but it's one of the old ones. He rarely remembers anything from back then, besides abstract information. He guesses he's just too far removed from what he was. But this one’s unmistakable, an odd distortion on it, the sound coming out slightly tinny, like it was shot through a camera and not experienced with eyes and ears.

_Patrick heard his own legs creak, his jerky gait worse than ever as he trotted after Pete. He wasn't thinking anything, just running algorithms through his head and acting according to their outcome. Right now, he was coded to play with Pete, so he was._

_“You're supposed to try and catch me, Patrick,” Pete was saying, rolling his eyes. Patrick blinked, like he was programmed to every eleven seconds so that he wasn't unsettling._

_Patrick, on his unsophisticated plastic legs, had a top speed much lower than Pete's. He was working at the best of his capacity, but his performance of the operation appeared not to be pleasing. He explained as much to Pete, who insisted that he was a ‘slowcoach’ and jogged forwards._

_Patrick clanked after him, diverting all his RAM into the movement of his legs as his programming suggested was appropriate. Eventually, Pete came back, sticking his tongue out at Patrick._

_“You need oiling,” he realised flatly, as Patrick's leg creaked again. “Why didn't you tell me, silly?” He bopped Patrick's nose._

_“If you are looking for: my restart button,” Patrick stated automatically, “You may find it located: between, my, eyes.”  
Pete shook his head, sighing. He doesn't bother to explain that, as Patrick now knows after years of experiencing it, it's just a sign of affection._

_“Your: mother and, father, are notified by: e-mail, in the event that I require: charging, repairs, and updates. To maximise, efficiency, I do not request an, oil change, until it is, urgent,” he continued._

_Pete rolled his eyes and took Patrick's hand, dragging him to the shed where Pete and his dad worked on robotics together. Pete learnt a lot from sitting on the desk, watching his father working on repairs, and was usually competent enough to repair Patrick himself unless the error was serious._

The memory goes blank there, playing like an old damaged tape with no ending instead of a real memory. It leaves Patrick with the lingering wonder when Pete stopped being able to repair him.

***

It gets progressively worse after that. Patrick went home alone, too unsettled by the memory to be able to be romantic enough to ask her. He hobbles to his car feeling furious that even after all these years he might as well still be a fucking robot.

He wakes up the next morning to see his phone buzz with a notification from Pete and feels his traitorous heart leap into his throat. He feels a jolt of anxiety as he reads it. Between the couple of drinks he'd had before he program and the lingering nerves about appearing in the shorts and tiny t-shirt with his ass in the air, he hadn't thought about covering his feet at all. His heart squeezes at the thought of Pete still looking out for him like that.

He's just started to compose a message that would somehow convey his loneliness and regret and gratefulness without seeming desperate, but stops. The comforter slides off his leg as he rolls over, revealing his left foot. His left foot, which has two plastic toes attached to it. It's quite obvious when Patrick leans closer to look, that there's nothing else it could be.

He can see the seam where plastic becomes skin, at the join of his big toe and the one next to it. He curls all of his toes. The two in the centre remain resolutely upright.

Patrick goes to the bathroom and throws up.

***

By mid afternoon, the dull plastic has spread all the way up to his mid-calf. After Patrick stops retching, he goes unsteadily downstairs to get something to eat, the unwelcome reminder that this could be the last meal he ever tastes ringing in his ears.

When he tries to crouch to pick up a spoon he's dropped, Patrick's rewarded with an unwelcome stiffness in his knees from joints never built to bend that far. He gets to sitting position and his knees simply click ano refuse to bend any lower. This leads to the realisation that under his skin, he's being… _reclaimed_ , even faster. He has to bend at the hips, which he's grateful to find are still functional.

After more attempts at basic household chores fail miserably, Patrick notices the pinkie toe on his other foot has gone too. He tries to calculate how long it's going to take before it envelopes his whole body, but ironically the math is escaping him right now.

He stares until he can't look at himself anymore and then hobbles up the stairs, disgusted at what he's becoming. Clinging to the hope that since most bodily processes slow down in sleep, maybe the plastic crawling up his skin will too, he climbs back into bed and tries to sleep. It's only three.

He lays awake, staring at the ceiling blankly and wonders if, once he turns back, his brain will go too, or if he'll be trapped in the incompetent mechanic body that doesn't even let him go out alone without being stolen or reported to the police or whatever people do when they see a life sized doll lumbering down the street. Let alone… well, no one could love him when he's like that. After much deliberation, he can't decide which option is worse and falls asleep, his phone forgotten on the side.

  
***

Patrick wakes up fuzzy headed. He checks his phone: a missed call and voicemail from Jess and another text from Pete. His stomach leaps at the wrong one.

The text says: ' _hey rick this is dumb but i had a weird feeling yesterday somethings wrong, pls put my mind @ rest? sorry.'_

Patrick ignores it, swallowing the lump in his throat. Pete _can't_ find out. He already knows what Pete thinks of him. If he's going to go, he at least wants Pete to remember him how he was meant to be, even if Pete thinks there's just a bundle of wires inside. He moves on, listening to the voicemail.

“ _Hey baby? It's Jess. You were a little off yesterday, I'm worried about you. Do you mind if I drop by today? And how's your leg? Call me back, bye_!”

Patrick texts her ‘ _I'm in all day, you can drop by around 10’_ noticing numbly as he does that his right index finger doesn't move like it's meant to anymore. Squishing his eyes shut against the bile rising in his throat, he taps his finger against the touchscreen. It clicks solidly like plastic hitting class.

At that moment, he realises that he's going to have to break up with Jess. In case he _does_ become his own consciousness trapped inside an unrealistic robot, he can't have her finding out what he is. Honestly, the realisation hurts more than he'd expected.

***

He goes downstairs, feeling like a crippled old man, before she arrives so she doesn't notice how fucked up his walking has gotten. He pulls on too-long sweatpants, socks, and a long sleeved shirt. Wearing gloves for a breakup seems noticeably weird, so he'll just have to keep his hand in his pocket.

It goes as well as a breakup can. Patrick basically tells the truth: that he just doesn't love her, he thought he could and he's sorry for leading her on and she's really a lovely person and he knows she'll find someone who deserves her, but there's just no spark. She nods, like maybe she agrees, hugs him goodbye, and leaves.

That part’s easy. The hard part is the text from Pete that says ‘ _Trick????? please its stupid but im kinda scared now mom says u havent called in a while just text so ik ur ok?_ ’ Patrick swallows the acid that rises in his throat and puts his phone down.

“What do I do in my last days as a human?” he wonders aloud, the uttering making it all too real. The only answer his instincts have for him is to ache for Pete.

He plays the drums and then the guitar, because by tomorrow his hands might be out of action. When he stands up, he cries a little over his hi-hat and sentimentally kisses his bass drum goodbye. He drafts multiple emails to Pete and doesn't send them, even one he almost sets on a timer to send in a week but chickens out.

Then he digs out the old charging station that he'd kept, mostly as a reminder. His feet now both fully plastic, he experiments with plugging himself in. The idea makes him cringe, but it's painless. The feeling of energy and light flooding his brain is enough to creep him out, though, and he quickly unplugs himself. It felt a lot like being drunk. Now, he notices that he's gotten pretty hot. _Overheated_. When he looks down, the plastic has climbed to below his knees.

  
***

Feeling the need to see the outside one last time, Patrick covers himself with clothes and thanks God that he moved back to Chicago from LA. He walks like a zombie now, but he doesn't get many weird looks as he shuffles down the street with his head down.

When someone runs into him on his way back home, despite the rage bubbling up in him - not at them, but his situation, but it'll take any outlet it can - he finds himself only able to say, “Apologies, sir.” He gets home as fast as he can after that.

At home, he sits on the bed staring at himself and notices that there's only a few inches of leg left on the right side. He's not anxious for the return of the Ken doll setup between his legs, hoping absurdly that his ability to eat and drink goes before his ability to let it out again does.

He looks in the mirror again before he goes to bed and cries. Everything up to this point has been scary as _hell_ , but not _really_ changed his appearance. Even the one plastic finger hasn't yet expanded. But when Patrick goes to wash his face, his eyes are a bright, unnatural blue and babydoll huge and his hair is obviously synthetic, although still bleached blonde. He styles it frantically, trying to make it look less awful, but it doesn't take gel the same, flopping down in the face of anything but a tiny quiff.

After throwing up twice, he sinks down and curls up on the bathroom floor. There's _no_ mistaking him for a human anymore, he realises, crying like he hasn't since the band broke up. 

When his phone beeps again, it's dark. He takes it out of his pocket despite knowing what it will be, which is a mistake. The text, from Pete, reads: ‘ _PATRICK PLS JUST TELL ME IF UR OK? ARE U DYING_?’ Patrick's about to lock his phone and put it away, but he feels compelled not to.

He doesn't even have the strength to cry anymore as he watches his very free will turn to plastic, his fingers skipping across the keyboard even as he frantically tries to resist. Patrick has to obey what Pete says.

 _I'm not sure,_ Patrick types back. His hands come back to him as soon as he presses send, but it's too late. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I... I'm a terrible person. The next chapter is the very worst and then things will look up hopefully! sorry to put u guys through this lmao  
> ps: i feel like sometimes I phrase explain things badly so if there's ever anything you don't understand even if it's only little you can comment and ask!  
> DOUBLE PS: don't trust my technical bullshit at all i don't understand computers ok i'm just guessing here

Pete scrambles for his phone with damp hands when he finally gets a text from Patrick. He's embarrassed to admit that he'd set a custom ringtone for Patrick, so he wouldn't have a heart attack every time his phone rang.

He stares at the screen for a moment. What the hell does ‘ _I don't know’_ mean? Why did Patrick only reply now, after however many days, with such a short, cryptic text? Pete feels panic squeeze in his chest, but he doesn't know what he's supposed to _do_.

Despite everything, the idea of actually seeing Patrick makes anxiety bubble up in his throat and surround him. He fucked up before, and he'll probably do it again and he can't deal with Patrick's flat, cold eyes that he uses when he's been hurt to much and he forces himself to hate someone to protect himself. Pete's seem them before, directed at other people. He'd die if he saw them aimed at him.

So Pete does what he does fucking best, and gets wasted.

Sometime after he's finished off what's in the fridge and unlocked the liquor cabinet, he realises he's being selfish and calls a cab to Patrick's place.

  
***

Patrick's been staring at himself in the mirror, adjusting the old baseball cap he found from a long time ago, one that Pete gave him, and dark sunglasses. He looks normal enough for a passing glance, but anyone who looks for longer than that will quickly see the plastic film forming over his lips, and anywhere he hasn't completely swaddled his body, treacherous plastic peeks out.

When he woke up that morning, Patrick's vision was somehow flatter and… lower quality than usual. When he lifted his gaze from the cushion in front of his head to his legs at the end of the bed, he heard the quiet whirring of a lens adjusting. He cried again when he realised what had happened, feeling all the more pathetic that he couldn't deal with this nobly. He spent an hour singing with his piano, scared that his voice would go next.

It's evening now, and Patrick shoves his cap down over his face to go and lie on his bed alone, awaiting oblivion. He's only been there for a few minutes when he hears a knock at the door. Instinct gets him as far as the stairs, before he realises that he can't exactly answer it. He decides to go down anyway and see if he can do something about getting the other person to go away from behind the door.

He creaks down the steps slowly, holding onto the banister so he doesn't fall on his newly feeble legs, listening to the agonising whirring of his pathetic joints. He remembers before, Pete or his parents carefully lifting him and carrying his light synthetic body up stairs he could barely take by himself, and tastes a tear rolling down his cheek and hitting his lip.

At the bottom step, he stops, finally able to devote some attention outside of just getting down the stairs. He realises that there's noise coming from the door, someone yelling almost incoherently and saying, “Open up, open the _fuck_ up, Patrick!”

He tries to step away, panicking at the sound of Pete's voice, but of course it's too late because he hears the command and opens the door before he can stop himself. 

  
***

The first thing Patrick notices is that Pete stinks of alchol. He can smell it as soon as he opens the door, foul fumes permeating his nostrils.

Pete steps inside, dazed looking back, and tries to yank Patrick into a hug but Patrick neatly steps away without it looking deliberate. He hopes Pete isn't going to make him walk too far, because even drunk he'll probably notice something wrong if Patrick goes more than a few paces.

“Patrick!” Pete beams, drunk and happy, “You're _alive_! Why didn't you reply to my-” he stops, catching sight of the coat Jess left on the hook. Patrick hopes she won't be back for it. He notices Pete's expression change and feels fear pound in his chest.

“Ooh, who's the girl, Rick?” Pete slurs, but it's not curious, it's nasty. Especially when he goes on to say, “Does she know, huh? Did you muster up the courage to say it, ‘hey baby, I used to be Pete's pet robot’. Hm? Or are you trying to pretend that you're _normal_? Has she just never seen the bottom of your feet - when is she going to meet your _parents_?” He laughs, harsh and clear.

“Am I still the only one who knows? Huh?” he pushes Patrick up against the wall and Patrick feels his heart race, but not just in terror, despite everything. Pete breathes his harsh liquor breath into Patrick's face and hisses, “I know what you _are_.”

Patrick goes red and furious, feeling shame flash hot and cold all over as he struggles free. Pete's even more right than he knows.  
“What are you even doing here,” Patrick mumbles, but his confidence is gone and he just feels small and dirty and ashamed, “You're drunk. You should go home.”

Pete shakes his head furiously, gripping the sleeves of Patrick's coat. “No! You're mine, and I won't go until everyone knows that. She can't have you, ‘Trick, I _need_  you.”  
Patrick shudders and isn't sure if he likes that or not. But he has bigger problems, like getting Pete out before he notices anything amiss.

Patrick doesn't have any more time to worry, because Pete leans in like he's going to kiss him, and fists his hands in Patrick's hair, knocking the cap off.

 

If it was anyone else, Patrick might get away with just the hair, but Pete feels it, even drunk, beneath his fingers and pulls back to stare at him in shock. Pete yanks Patrick's dark glasses off before he can resist, and Patrick turns his head away, chin high and jaw tight, but Pete still notices.

Patrick feels like he's going to cry, if he even still _can_. There's plastic creeping up his neck like a plague and Pete sees it when he gently removes Patrick's scarf. There's a few spots of softness remaining on Patrick's belly and arm, but aside from those, his face is the last refuge of his humanity. He feels just as numb as his synthetic skin as Pete peels off more of his bundles of clothing, uncovering more and more fucking plastic.

Pete looks like Patrick feels as he runs a shaking hand across the soft skin of Patrick's face.  
“Patrick I- I… I'm sorry I shouted at you. Fuck, I didn't mean it. I didn't mean it like _this_ \- I'm sorry, I'm so _sorry_ , this is my fault-” Pete rests his hands on Patrick's shoulders, stricken.

“No, Pete, it's okay. You're drunk, I forgive you. I'll always fucking forgive you, for anything. I know you didn't mean it.” Patrick sags, suddenly exhausted after everything he's had to go through alone these past few days. “I'm glad you're here,” he says quietly into Pete's shoulder.

***

Pete has the remarkable capacity to sober up fast under pressure. He takes control quickly, calling a cab to his place and helping Patrick down the steep steps outside his front door without comment. Patrick's infinitely grateful to him for walking slowly enough that Patrick can easily keep up.

Pete helps him into the cab, sneaking a kiss to his neck that Patrick decides not to mention, and fixes his hat with a tight grin once he's in.  
“Thanks,” Patrick says quietly.

Once they're back at Pete's place, Pete waits in the doorway of the kitchen for Patrick to catch up, then pours himself a glass of water. He starts to pour one for Patrick, but he shakes his head.  
“I can't,” he says hoarsely. Pete does a good job of covering up his expression.

He pulls out a chair for Patrick and helps him sit down, then sits down himself and leans forward with a sharp gaze that causes Patrick to shut his own eyes sadly.  
“So,” Pete says eventually, “Explain.”

So Patrick does, neatly encapsulating everything that's happened and every symptom he is experiencing up to now. Pete's expression just gets sadder and sadder, and Patrick finds himself wishing he'd be angry instead. Patrick's in tears by the time he explains how he has no choice but to follow direct orders, and Pete takes his hand and looks miserable too. Patrick's just relieved he can still cry.

“Will your brain turn back too?” Pete asks suddenly, looking like someone is choking him. When Patrick just shrugs, Pete starts crying too, and they cling to each other across the table and sob, and it's sort of freeing and very human.

When they pull apart and smile miserably at each other - Pete's eyes red and squinting, Patrick's still unblemished and wide - Pete squeezes Patrick's unrelentingly solid hand as tightly as he can, cocking his head when he hears the loud creak of Patrick's metal knuckles curling around his hand in return.

“What?” Patrick says suspiciously, catching the look on Pete's face. He feels self conscious all of a sudden, aware of how he must look to Pete in his half formed state, with the same eyes as you see on those creepy china dolls, useless creaking limbs like a pensioner.

He snatches his hand back and yanks his hat down over his face and thinks that if he looked normal and not like something from a horror movie, he might've kissed Pete just then, so he could get it off his chest before he as good as dies.

Pete ducks his head to look up at his ex-bandmate and taps two fingers on the side of his jaw. It's an old ritual of theirs, from when Patrick was much younger, whenever he was anxious or overwhelmed or pent up. It's easily been five years since Pete’s done that.

When Patrick was a robot - well, more of one - tapping the side of his jaw made him clear his cache. It works like impulse memory on human Patrick, helping to clear away the bundle of thoughts that he's holding onto and doesn't need and awarding his crowded head fresh clarity and calm. At this point, Patrick isn't sure how far gone he is, and if it's Pete's reassuring touch or if his mental cache really is clearing itself out.

The one upside, Patrick thinks, of this whole situation, is that at least robots don't have ADHD.

“What's wrong?” Pete asks, his fingers retreating. Patrick misses them when they're gone.

“Don't look at me,” Patrick mumbles, the words escaping before he has the chance to order his thoughts and make an excuse. He bites his lip, turning away. Pete gazes at for a long time, his brown eyes wide and concerned.  
“Patrick…?”

“God, I must look awful right now,” Patrick says bitterly. “I don't even _care_ anymore, but I don't want _you_ to see.” He forces his eyes up from the ground to look at Pete. Pete looks distraught.

“Patrick, listen, I don't-” Pete starts, his eyes watering again and his lip wobbling. Patrick trains his eyes on the movement Pete's adam’s apple as he swallows. “I don't want you to… _go_ , and not know.”

His breath gusts across Patrick's nose, his proximity making the heart Patrick will lose soon pound.  
“I don't want you never to know that I love you,” he says, giving Patrick time to move away before he seals their lips for the first and possibly last time. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: theres an implied sex scene that lasts for literally two lines (I'm not big on them either but i felt like it was necessary in some way) but it's not graphic and you can just skip the teeny paragraph of you don't want to read it c:

Pete looks up at Patrick from the floor of his kitchen. He has a smudge of oil on his left cheek. Patrick can't help grinning back at him, feeling a warm glow inside him like a candle being battered in a storm. He still can't really decide if turning back into a robot is worth kissing Pete, which is a little pathetic for various reasons.

“Wiggle your legs for me?” Pete says and Patrick, seated on the table, does. The smooth glide of them now, without the godawful clanking, is gratifying, and Pete smiles proudly.  
“That's better!” he laughs, and Patrick feels gratified to be the one who made Pete laugh, even if it is by being the _tin can man_. Then Pete kisses Patrick's kneecap and pulls his sweats back down over his legs and stands up.

Patrick feels his heart racing as Pete pushes in between his legs, crowding him further back onto the table. Pete holds Patrick steady with arms around his waist and they kiss slowly. Patrick whines, wrapping his legs around Pete's waist and counting the small victory when they don't squeak. In the quiet, they kiss like they should've a long time ago, when they were young and not out of time. They both seem to realise at the same time just how little time Patrick might have left.

Patrick makes a needy sound and forces himself closer. Pete pulls back, buries his head in Patrick's shoulder, and lifts him clear off the table. With a quiet gasp, Patrick swoons at how easily Pete can lift him like he's nothing. Which he almost _is_ now, all carefully designed lightweight insides just so he'd be easier to lift. He feels like a fragile doll in Pete's arms, and surprisingly doesn't hate the feeling. He licks and sucks at Pete's neck like he doesn't know if he'll wake up tomorrow. Which, oh yeah.

Pete takes the stairs like it’s nothing, holding him protectively tight.

“God, Patrick,” he growls, slamming Patrick into the wall at the top and proceeding to devour his face, “God.”   
Patrick tilts his chin up meekly, letting Pete use him how he wants to and batting obedient blue eyes at him. He wishes they hadn't waited so long, so there could be more on the table for them right now. He feels shame boiling hot in his belly at the thought.

Pete finally lets him stand on his own feet and kisses him forcefully, sending them stumbling into the bedroom, where he pushes Patrick down onto the bed and climbs on top of him. “If we hadn't been so stupid,” he's saying, breathy and frantic, “I would've waited, made sure this was special and not rushed. But I don't know how much time there _is_ , so-” he starts fiddling with Patrick's belt and Patrick realises suddenly, sitting up and knocking Pete to the side in his embarrassed panic.

“Pete, we _can't_ ,” he admits miserably, glancing down at his own crotch. “It's _too_ _late_.”

Pete's eyes widen in understanding before he shushes him and pushes him back down. “Hey, it's okay,” he whispers, “We can just pretend. I'll just touch you and make it nice, okay?”  
Patrick nods feverishly and lets Pete dispose of his pants, his underwear baggy where it's missing something crucial, but Pete just peels that off too and doesn't bat an eyelid at the smooth featureless plastic between Patrick's legs, just runs his finger down the seam between it and Patrick's leg, watching him jerk with a sleepy smile.

“So you can still feel it, then,” Pete observes, and Patrick barely even feels bad about how he must look.

In the next half hour, Pete teaches him to be grateful that he still has nipples, then finishes thrusting frantically between Patrick's thighs, letting out muffled noises that make Patrick shiver.

Afterwards, he's exhausted again, and lets Pete tuck him into bed before curling up beside him. The warmth is nice, but Patrick suspects this will be the last night he's able to sleep without charging.

“I love you,” he sighs.

***

Patrick wakes up with tears on his face. Pete is looming over him, looking at him with concern in his features.   
“Morning,” Pete says gently, looking sad again.

Patrick tries to wipe the tears off his cheeks with his hands, but plastic proves terrible at anything but scratching his face where the sharp edge of his fingernail runs into his soft cheek. Pete takes a tissue from the nightstand and wipes his cheeks for him, putting an arm around to hold him still. He stares intensely at Patrick's face, eyes darting back and forth furtively with their noses pressed together. Patrick shuts his eyes and lets Pete chastely join their lips.

“How are you doing?” Pete asks, and Patrick thinks he might mean ‘what else turned back in the night?’

Afraid to speak, Patrick shakes his head. He doesn't know if his voice is still intact. Without it, he has nothing for Pete at all. When he can still speak normally, if Pete closes his eyes, he can Patrick's still something he can love. Voiceless, he's just an ill-fated heap of wires.

Resting his arm on the small of Patrick's back, Pete tells him, “Um, I wanted to run this by you… a lot of the tech you're running now is either pretty outdated or pretty worn out, or both. If you want me to, I can run some repairs and update everything. It's okay if you don't want that. I just want you to get the best I can give you.”

Patrick's mouth quirks up at Pete's nervousness, and he presses their lips quickly together, still reeling that he can do that now.   
“Yeah,” he says quietly, continuing louder when his voice comes out normal, “That's a good idea. That would be awesome. Thank you so much Pete, for-”

Patrick bites his lip, burrowing closer into Pete's side. “Well, for being here at all, I guess. I don't know how I'd survive if I was on my own right now. And the fact that you didn't just turn around and leave me… yeah, I'm really grateful for that.”

 

***

  
Pete takes a trip to the hardware store and the specialist electronics store while Patrick waits anxiously behind. Although he can't text well, he has the cell phone that Pete fit carefully in his palm, and Pete texts him frequently to make sure he's okay, and he has to reply the letter ‘y’ if he's doing fine and nothing significant that would warrant Pete rushing back to be with him has happened.

Pete spends enough money that he has to get rid of the receipt so Patrick won't find it. It's not like they aren't both millionaires, and Pete would give all of it away for Patrick anyway, but Patrick still gets weird about these things.

They spend the morning in Pete’s shed, Patrick sitting obediently up on the workbench as Pete buzzes around with his tools. He stops occasionally to make disapproving comments at the state of everything, and Patrick pretends to understand half the words he's saying. It makes him laugh that he's the robot and Pete's the only one with any _clue_ about what's actually going on.

He gives Patrick a list of words to record, types a lot of things on his computer and then pulls out the USB, plugs it into an adapter and plugs that into the socket on Patrick's left foot.  
“I've updated your voice files,” he says matter of factly, “From that robotic, jittery shit. There's this beta software that generates AI voicing from voice recording clips. You won't need it yet, but you should still, um, sound a lot like yourself.”

Patrick nods gratefully, pulling him into a hug from his perch on the workbench.   
“Thanks for all this,” he mumbles.

“Don't thank me until after I've detached half of your eye to get a couple more megapixels in that thing,” Pete laughs hollowly.

  
***

The exact moment his heart stops beating, Patrick feels it. They're halfway through cooking dinner, and Pete must hear the sharp gasp too, because he comes running over and is immediately cradling Patrick's face, asking what's wrong. Grimacing, Patrick just takes his hand and places it over his chest, watching Pete's brows tug into a line as he feels the lack of a pulse below his palm.

Pete holds him tightly while the pasta for one simmers on the stove. Patrick's distantly aware of the drawer handle pressing into his back, but it doesn't even hurt anymore. Patrick cries into Patrick's shoulder - earlier, Pete had refilled the long-empty tear ducts someone designed in and Pete never knew about. They seem to have been built experimentally and never tested, because they leak quite theatrically and Pete's shoulder is damp when Patrick pulls away.

Pete smiles, tears glinting in his eyes. Patrick's eyelids blink repeatedly, out of his control, to clear the water from his lenses.   
“If you're not eating, you need to make sure you charge at night,” Pete says thickly. Patrick just nods.

Patrick serves Pete's pasta on a plate, fetching him a knife and fork and glass of water. As Pete eats, Patrick washes yesterday’s dishes and the pots from this meal. Distressed, Pete looks up at him, beckoning for him to sit.  
“Patrick, what are you doing? We can wash those later, babe.”

Patrick shudders at the pet name, but the moment is ruined somewhat by circumstance. “I have to,” he mutters, tears blooming on his cheeks again. He scrubs furiously at a plate. “I _have to_.”

“Patrick, come and sit down,” Pete orders forcefully, and Patrick feels his chest ache with relief. “I'm so sorry,” he says, once Patrick is seated beside him, “You know I'd never try to tell you what to do or use you or take away your free will. I was just helping you not to-”

Patrick laughs, half harsh and half sweet, touched at Pete's care and sensitivity. “I know, I got that. Thanks for, like, saving me.”  
Pete looks miserable, and Patrick wonders what he said.

“I wish I could,” Pete mumbles sadly.

Patrick kisses him, mostly because he doesn't know what else to do, and it ends up a sour and desperate kiss, Patrick clinging as tightly as he can (not very) to Pete's shirt and not moving an inch, whimpering quietly as Pete holds him and doesn't so much kiss Patrick as let Patrick kiss him, because he knows that's what Patrick needs.

“It’s not fair,” Patrick sobs, pulling away. “I've been telling myself that it is and I was lucky to have a life at all and I should just accept it and go, but… It's not fucking  _fair_ , whoever decided to just give me a life, then give me you too, and then just _rip_ it away it the cruellest, most embarrassing way. It's not _fair_.”

Pete agrees. “I know,” he hisses, holding Patrick tightly. “Don't you think I fucking _know?_ I…don't know what I'm going to do without you if you get taken away from me.”

“You lived without me before,” Patrick replies quietly. “I never _existed_ before you. I don't know if that's fucked up, but… these last few months, without you, I might as well have been what I'm becoming the whole time.”

Pete takes hold of Patrick's forearms, his fingers clinging to the slippery plastic.   
“Patrick, listen to me right now. I'd be dead a thousand times over without you. Best case scenario, I'd be a drug-addled, unemployed nobody who still lives with their parents. Every one of the best experiences of my life have all been because of you. It doesn't matter how you came to be, you are and it's a big deal to a lot of people.”

“I love you,” Patrick whimpers, wishing he could've just had Pete for a little while longer before all of this.

“I love you too.”

***

“Pete? Pete! Wake up, please, oh my god, please just-”

“Huh? Patrick, what the… what's going on?” Pete mumbles, casting around for Patrick as he pulls off the bedsheets and sits bolt upright. When his eyes adjust to the dim mid-morning light and pick out the panicked figure before him.

In the night, the plastic has crept up and engulfed Patrick's face. Pete stifles a blunt grimace at the pale porcelain smooth, with perfect apples of blush painted onto his cheeks. He barely looks like Patrick anymore.

“Pete, it's, I can feel it. It's going to go, and soon. You gotta, you gotta- I don't have long, Pete-”

Trying to make sense of the morning confusion, Pete wrinkles his nose and links his hand with Patrick's. “Patrick, Patrick shhh. I don't understand, what's going on, my love?” he asks gently, stroking Patrick's solid cheek.

Patrick takes a deep breath, the whites of his eyes showing and his pupils blown, frantically darting around like a cornered animal. “I just woke up and I can feel it. I'm about to turn back, Pete, fuck.”

Pete gapes, too in shock for tears. He yanks Patrick into a desperate kiss, trembling as their tongues clash.   
“I love you, I love you, I love you,” Patrick is mumbling frantically. “I'm going to forget that, but I do, I always do. Shit, I'm so scared…”

Forcing himself not to do something terrible like scream or break something, Pete nods. “I love you too. Even when you won't know, when you don't understand that. I always will.”

Pete feels Patrick nod quickly into his neck, then he tenses suddenly, spasms jerkily, and neatly steps away. Pete doesn't even have to wait for him to speak, he's already bracing himself for some shitty, empty line.

He can tell already from looking at Patrick's new stance, his flat eyes, absent smile, the fact that his leg isn't twitching and he's not fiddling with his hands, some nervous impatient tic to empty some of the busyness from Patrick's ever-churning brain. It's obvious; Patrick isn't there anymore. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a short one, unedited because it's late... i go back to school in a few days so i've been scarce lately and will be for a while

Pete spends most of the day grieving. It doesn't help that the person he's mourning keeps bringing him tissues and glasses of water to stay hydrated, spouting helpful advice for people who are dealing with sadness. He asks Pete if he's taken his meds today, and when Pete says he doesn't take them anymore, cocks an eyebrow. It looks so much like Patrick, real Patrick, that Pete starts to cry again.

“Did I upset you with something I said?” Patrick says, in almost his ordinary voice, and Pete regrets updating his voice files, because it's a lot like giving someone in the middle of the desert desert three drops of water.

“No you didn't,” Pete gets out, running his hands longingly through Patrick’s hair. He caves, resting his forehead against the unaware robot’s chest. “I miss you already. I miss you so much. Come back to me, Rick.”

“I'm right here!” Patrick says cheerily.

With the expression of someone waking from a bad dream, Pete's head jerks up and he stares in naïve, joyous disbelief.

“Would you like anything to drink, sir?”

Pete makes the same noise he'd probably make if someone kicked his lungs out through his nose. Patrick stares blankly as he collapses to the floor.  
“You have fallen. Would you like me to assist you?”

“Fuck off!” Pete snarls, sobbing, “Get the fuck out, you disgusting fucking impostor, and don't ever come near me again unless you give me my Patrick back.” He hears the stupid thing shuffling away and thanks god it has enough tact for that as he crumples into a screaming heap.

***

By dinner time, Pete feels awful. Although it mostly isn't, the robot is still the closest thing he has to Patrick, and he feels like he just screamed at Patrick, which reminds him of their fight before the hiatus, and makes him feel even worse.

When he comes downstairs, Patrick is cooking dinner in the kitchen. He's wearing an apron, which actually makes Pete smile a little bit. And maybe he's not Patrick anymore, but Pete can still pretend. He drapes himself across Patrick's shoulders and notes that he still smells the same, probably lingering scent in his clothes,

“I'm sorry,” Pete sighs and, even though he shouldn't, half expects Patrick turn around and whisper ‘me too’.

“I'm a robot,” is the simple reply he receives, emotionless, but Pete projects his own bitterness into it. You can't apologise to a robot, Pete notes, because you can't do anything wrong to it. He fists his hand in Patrick's hair and pulls, giving into a sadistic urge to see him hurt like Pete is.

Patrick doesn't turn around, just keeps stirring what's in front of him until Pete's hand drops eventually, tired.  
“Come back,” Pete hisses, turning around and heading back to his bedroom to sulk until he's ready to face Patrck again.

  
***

It takes a while for Pete to even be able to handle Patrick being around him, but then he takes to having Patrick go everywhere with him just like when they were kids.

Taking Patrick's hand, Pete sticks the cane he'd ordered online into it.  
“Hold this,” he enunciates carefully, proud of his resolve for not wavering once from Patrick's eerie eyes. “And don't take off your sunglasses, and people will just think you're injured. Do you understand?”

Patrick nods, gripping onto the cane after a delay. Pete takes him into the outskirts of the city, sticking protectively close to his side the whole time. A flock of birds fly overhead, screeching loudly, and Patrick looks up in shock, humanness crossing his face; it seems to just be well-built reflexes, because then he drops his head like Pete told him to and keeps shuffling on.

They go to the store, and Patrick refuses to let Pete carry any of the grocery bags.  
“Are you still doing the soy milk thing?” Pete calls to him without thinking, hand closing around a carton of soy before he remembers and thrusts it back, grabbing Patrick's hand and hurrying on.

He turns to cover Patrick's smile with his fingers. It used to be his favorite thing, but now the permanent porcelain curl of pink just seems mocking and cold, and he feels sick to look at it. In the middle of the street, stuck by sudden fairytale inspiration, he slams his lips into Patrick's where his fingers were, and- gets electrocuted. Patrick's eyes are shuttered closed.

“Jesus,” Pete hisses, forcefully pushing up Patrick's eyelids where the shock had triggered them shut and left them like that. His sharp nails would be brutal scratching at the skin of a real eyelid, but on Patrick's they just fumble painlessly over plastic. “Did you just electrocute me?”

“I have detected… two… faults in my wiring. It is possible that coming into contact with these faults could result in injury until I am repaired. Please exercise caution,” Patrick replies.

Suddenly, Pete feels ashamed of himself.  
“Patrick…if you can hear me, I love you and I'm sorry. Thanks for… sticking around. And I don't mean right now, because you don't have a choice. I mean all the times that you did have a choice, and you picked me over anywhere else in the world. So I'm going to return the favour now, I guess.” Patrick's eyes don't leave his, and he says nothing. Pete sighs. It was stupid anyway; of course Patrick can't hear him. Then, almost imperceptibly, he simply nods.

Pete jumps slightly. It could easily have been some careful coding, but it could've been a sign. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the long wait! Hopefully more things up soon! remember to visit me on tumblr saverockandsoulpvnk and send me ideas or prompts!

Pete's woken up in the night by a banging. He rolls out of bed and turns on the light and is surprised, to say the least. Patrick is standing on his charging station, facing the wall, and thrashing wildly. The harsh thuds of plastic against the wall make Pete wince, and he flinches when he hears Patrick mumbling feverishly.

“Pete, mmnh, I'm, please, please please Pete, I'm, I'm-” Pete doesn't catch much else, but another thrash with Patrick's terrified expression and a sharp ‘help’ is enough to have Pete rushing to unplug the station at the mains and pulling Patrick's feet off where they're connected.

He has Patrick bundled in his arms, cradling him back and forth like a baby, though he's still as plastic as ever, by the time Patrick blinks his big blue eyes open and stares blankly.   
“Pete…”

  
Patrick clings tightly to Pete's hand. There's an awful few minutes where Patrick jerks and spits out strings of glitching nonsense and even sparks, and Pete doesn't know if he's going to come back, get back to normal, or stop working altogether.

His hand spasms in Pete's grasp, then goes limp.   
“Patrick?” Pete asks eventually, stroking his synthetic mop.

  
“Mmhm?” Patrick mumbles, looking around frantically.

“Are you still there, baby?”

Patrick nods his head unsurely, and Pete's heart races. Patrick fixes a vacant expression on Pete's face and smiles drunkenly, rolling into his chest to cling to him.  
“I won't be for long, I don't know how long I can stay.”

“Okay,” Pete breathes, clutching Patrick tightly. “It's better than nothing… Fuck, I missed you.” He doesn't notice he's crying, but he sees a tear splash on Patrick's cheek below him and takes a shaky breath, trembling. “Missed you so much.”

Nodding, Patrick shifts painstakingly slowly until he's upright, straddling Pete's lap, and pitches forward, pressing their lips together. As is to be expected, it's far from a good kiss - plastic isn't particularly receptive and Pete feels a lot like he's licking the spoon after baking something, but it isn't for lack of trying on Patrick's part. It's perfect, though, just for being Patrick again when Pete thought he was gone.

“‘m sorry,” Patrick whimpers, resting his forehead against Pete's collarbone. Pete's hand shifts in his hair as he strokes it down, the sharp synthetic fibres sticking up too much.

“You don't have to be, Rick. I'm just glad you're back, even just for a while,” Pete whispers.

Patrick nods. His laugh is a blend of embarrassment and sadness. “Wasn't a good kiss for you, though,” He points out. Pete's silent, tugging him closer and peppering kisses across his jaw. Eventually, Patrick continues heavily, “Never will be again, probably. Like, even if I get back like this forever, I'll always be- I can't be in society, I can never tour again. We can never…”

A vein rises in Pete's jaw as he shifts Patrick on his lap and takes careful hold of his arms, looking at him intently.   
“That's… if that happens, it'll be really bad. It'll fucking suck, but you'll be here. And none of that matters to me. I'm not saying it's not something to you and I'm not trying to trivialise that-”

Patrick nods. “I know, but-”

“I know that what you love is being taken away and it's partly my fault… But we can do some things. You can record, you still have Nervous Breakdance, right? We can track stuff there. If we wanted to make a record… Joe and Andy would understand eventually. Or it's not like you and I can't make music by ourselves. And I’m just really desperate to take whatever of you I can get right now, whatever you're made of, you know? It's been a week and I miss you too fucking much already.”

Patrick kisses him again, and Pete feels his internal wince, so he strokes a hand down Patrick's sculpted jawline, hearing his muttered, “At least I get decent facial structure now.”

“You've always had that, fuck off.”

Patrick snorts, pulling back. “Doesn't this bother you? I feel like I'm- like it's creepy. You don't have to like, make out with Ken just so I don't get upset,” he blurts anxiously. It makes Pete laugh although he's miserable for Patrick, and himself.

“Not really. I'm just really really glad to have you at all, I don't care. Is there anything you wanted to do while you had the chance? Or… could you maybe just lie with me for a while so I can be with you?” He wants to stroke the flat of his hand over Patrick's exposed thigh but his expression doesn't indicate that it would comfort him at all, so Pete holds back; watches Patrick watch himself with an expression of faint distaste.

“I want to make a record,” Patrick says eventually, “But that's not much of an option right now, so I don't mind.” He sighs heavily, planting himself in the bed and waiting for Pete to come and lie down beside him. He's weird to spoon, rigid but familiar. When his solid elbow goes into Pete's side, Pete winces and squeaks, which causes Patrick to turn around with a panicked look.

“Am I-”

“You're not annoying me. I asked you to lie with me.” Pete rolls his eyes, throwing a hand around Patrick's still stomach. He winces. “Uh, can you breathe, though? My brain keeps thinking you're dead and panicking.”

Patrick frowns in concentration and then Pete feels the gentle sound of the pump in his chest shuddering to life. It should've been automatic - Pete guesses he must have connected up the new pump wrongly. Hearing Patrick's self satisfied hum, he adds his own congratulatory kisses along Patrick's collarbone.

“I'm so proud of you,” is the last thing he sighs out before he drifts off to sleep and, remembering the tiny, terrified little kid from the first day Patrick was really Patrick, Pete really is.

***

He's gone when Pete wakes up, hand still clinging tightly to Pete's shirt. A low battery notification flashes from Pete's phone, the app that's synced to Patrick.   
“Oh dear,” Pete says airily to himself, and Patrick's deaf ears, stamping down sadness he doesn't have the energy to deal with. “Somebody needs charging, huh?”

Unsurprisingly, Patrick stays silent.

With a surprising amount of difficulty, Pete drags the lifeless robot across the room to the power outlet and connects his feet up. With a pang, he remembers watching Patrick's barefooted yoga video and misses him like hell.   
“I miss you.”

Patrick makes a series of happy beeping noises to indicate that he's charging correctly, then notifies Pete that his functioning will be limited without Internet connection. As though he's just the old Patrick, forgetting everything like he always does,, Pete flicks him lightly on the cheek and sighs, “I just told you the wifi password. Why can't you connect now?”

“Low power mode is activated. Wifi connection is disabled in low power mode. Low power mode is switched to automatically when I run below ten percent. Charging input detected. Permission to switch to full power mode is required,” Patrick states stonily.

Pete can't find it in himself to be upset with Patrick's emotionless demeanour. Patrick's sudden re-appearance has given him the mad idea that there's hope, and he feels like he knows somehow that Patrick's still in there, too. With someone as brilliant as Patrick, he was lucky to ever get him at all. But that doesn't mean Pete will let go any time soon.

“Yeah, you can,” he says absently, petting Patrick's synthetic hair. “I'll fix it, Rick.” 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's for you Andy! SORRY FOR THE DELAY @EVERYONE. If you miss me you can check out my blog @saverockandsoulpvnk we have lots of headcanons and asks and fun shit!!

Pete decides not to try fixing it. He could, he could tinker with wires and search through mountains of code, but he has a feeling that's not where he'll find Patrick. Patrick didn't turn up in the first place because of machinery. If he's going to come back, it'll be the same way as before.

 

Pete thinks back, to Patrick's first birthday of sorts. He makes a list in his head, what was there that was gone by the time Patrick started to turn back. There's the obvious thing - him - but he searches frantically for anything else.

He doesn't know if Patrick, the real one, would want him to, but Pete calls his mom.

“Mommy?” he says, sounding and feeling so small. Patrick is sitting on a footstool beside him, whirring to himself. “Mom. Something’s wrong with Patrick. You... Can you come?”

“What? Is he- let me talk to my baby!” she begs, sounding just like how Pete feels. Maybe she thinks he was in an accident. Pete numbly hands the phone to Patrick.

 

“Hello, Mrs Wentz. May I help you?”

 

Pete knows Patrick calls her mom. He's always been embarrassed about it, for some reason, hiding it from Pete when he could, but Pete knows she's his mom too. He remembers the MTV cribs episode, Patrick carrying in his mom’s shopping like he did every Sunday when she went to the store. He had ‘mom’ on his lips then, stopping when he saw all the cameras and backing away. He always called her Dale when he spoke to Pete. Maybe he was getting into the habit in case it slipped out anywhere else.

 

She knew as well as Pete did that something was wrong.

 

***

 

When she arrives,  bursting in the unlocked door without knocking, she doesn't seem to notice Pete. Her eyes go straight to Patrick, and she bustles towards him impossibly fast. He's  wearing the hat, pulled low over his face, but not his sunglasses. Pete thought that maybe the hat would make him feel better, make Patrick seem more Patricky. It doesn't. 

 

“My baby,” Dale says softly. “My baby, what have they done to you?”

 

She doesn't yell. She never yells. Pete remembers his dad telling him once, maybe on a fishing trip: “If she raises her voice, you're safe. The quieter your mother speaks, the more upset she is.”

 

Patrick doesn’t reply. Pete can see the lack of understanding in his eyes as Dale turns to him.

“Pete?” she asks bleakly, not sure how to phrase anything else.

 

“He called me,” Pete says slowly. “I knew something was wrong. When I showed up here- his eyes, his hair…” he gestured vaguely at Patrick, leaving out the part where he was drunk and cruel. “We…  he didn't have a lot of time. We dealt with a lot of- things. I repaired him, we talked about everything we needed to while we still could. Then…”

 

“Oh!” Dale gasps miserably, clutching at her hair. “My little boy, my Patrick, he's-”

 

Pete sets his jaw stubbornly. “Mom. I'm going to fix it.”

 

***

 

Pete makes his mom a coffee, and they sit down at the kitchen table. Patrick stands awkwardly above them.

 

“He came back, once,” Pete says suddenly, breaking the silence. “Yesterday. He woke up and he was-” he waves a hand vaguely, “He still looked like that, but he was _Patrick_.”

 

Pete’s mom leans forward on her elbows. She must be mad that Pete didn't tell her earlier, give her a chance to say goodbye, but she isn't showing it. Perhaps the Mom-friendly version of what had happened between Pete and Patrick at the end had made her understand. “So… there might be a chance? “

 

Pete nods eagerly. “There has to be. He did it before, ” He didn't think about how that time, it had taken four years. Instead of arguing, Pete's mom just nods. Pete thinks that maybe, she needs Patrick back just as much as Pete does.

 

***

 

They spend the rest of the day looking through photo albums. Maybe looking for a cure, maybe just looking for memories of Patrick.

 

After all this time, Pete's favourite is still the crumpled one of Patrick in the hallway in Pete's borrowed pajamas. Patrick has never been Pete's brother, they were never like that. Pete remembers telling Patrick that having him was like a sleepover that lasted forever. He remembers, guilty, fighting with Patrick over Dale's attention. 

"She's not your mommy! You don't have a mommy, you can't steal mine! Just because we're friends, doesn't mean you get my mommy!"

Patrick had burst into tears and Pete hadn't been able to deal with that for very long before he crept over and apologised frantically. 

 

He only realises now that for most of Patrick's childhood, he'd been a refugee. Hiding from a society with no place for what he really was, hiding from scientific facilities that saw him as nothing other than a test subject - hiding from Pete's own father.

 

Pete looks through years and years of Patrick, going backwards from the last photo, his graduation from Glenview South, beaming under his graduation cap. There's no prom, they were recording and touring. There _is_ Patrick in a tux on his 18th, Pete in his evening best beside him with Joe and a couple of Patrick's school friends.

 

He goes back, back, back to Patrick's first day of high school, tiny and self-conscious under a knit cap. Another few pages and it's his 12th birthday, Pete looking tired from finals but smiling. He's almost at the back now, the early stages when Pete's excited mother took pictures at every opportunity - Patrick holding Pete's hand as they cross the road, Patrick grinning impishly from the branches of a tree he'd climbed.

 

The last one is the first ever one, that Pete has seen so many times now on fan accounts and newspaper articles and in the hands of anyone else who had one, and one photo only,  of Patrick as a kid, except from the yearbook ones.

 

He looks terrified, but Pete remembers Patrick burying his face in Pete's chest and smiling nervously just moments after. Pete lingers, his fingers skating across Patrick's blushing face like he can will it back to life. Then he lifts up the next photo album. These are mostly his own baby photos.

 

He flips impatiently past his own graduation, prom, 18th, him beside his first car, various photographs of him before and after soccer games. He knows what he's looking for, one thing. He doesn't want to see it, but he feels somehow that he needs to.

 

There's only one picture of Patrick… before. Being contraband, Pete's father wasn't keen for him to be photographed too much, but Dale and her ever-present camera won exactly one battle. Pete on his tenth birthday, his arm around the best present he ever received. Patrick looks nonchalant, Pete is beaming delightedly.

 

Pete stares at the picture for a long time. He only stops when his mom comes up beside him, gently prying the album from his grip and leading him to his bedroom.

“I'll take the spare room. Patrick can help me with the sheets,” she says gently. “Get some rest.”

 

***

 

Pete doesn't hear Patrick shuffle in and plug himself back into the charging port, but that's where he is when Pete wakes up.

 

He thinks it might be Patrick shaking his shoulders, but it's his mom.

“Pete,” she's saying urgently, “Pete, he woke up again! You missed it. He refused to wake you up. He says you haven't been sleeping because you've been worrying about him. He said you looked too peaceful… “

 

She presses her finger to Pete's lips before he can begin his angry stream of complaints aimed Patrick's way - something like “That stupid idiot, why does he do this, of _course_ he should've woken me up, Patrick _WHY_ , you moron!”

 

“Pete. Just _look_ ,” she hisses, unplugging Patrick and lifting up his shirt to expose his side. “He wanted to lie next to you. In your sleep, you put your hand on his side, under his shirt. I changed him into pyjamas, I wanted to…”

 

Pete nodded. She doesn't need to explain that. Patrick might not be able to appreciate it, but someone like his mom wouldn't be able to resist making sure he was cared for nonetheless. Hell, Pete is just the same, combing Patrick's hair and sticking his cap on every day, although he has no idea.

 

“While I was doing it, I saw this.” she takes her son’s hand and places it over Patrick's side, as Patrick stares obliviously ahead. Pete gasps. It's warm and _soft_. As the haze of sleep clears from his eyes, he sees the slightly lighter flesh coloured hand print on Patrick's side.

 

“Where you were touching him,” his mom says, just in case Pete is an idiot, “His skin is back.”

 

Pete cups Patrick's face in his hands. He hopes desperately, but Patrick's skin stays stubbornly plastic.

“Ricky?”

 

Patrick lunges forward suddenly, his forehead crashing into Pete's. “I'm still here,” he says frantically. “I'm still here. Don't forget me, I love you, I'm gonna get out.”

  
He steps back and it's obvious that he's gone. But Pete's heart is alight, and it doesn't matter. Just hours ago, he'd been saying his goodbyes, thinking the universe had granted him one last chance to spend with Patrick. But now he has hope, that he'll get Patrick back. Permanently this time.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (my new phone doesn't like to let me use italics without great upheaval, so you're going to have to imagine they're there in the bits on the computer etc)

It's a weird phase after that, where they know there's hope, but finding the answer seems so utterly hopeless. 

 

Pete sleeps with Patrick clutched in his arms every night, woken up at 3am with the loud beeping alerting him to low battery, which he has no idea how to turn off. 

 

He would start to lose hope, when Patrick doesn't come back, night after night, but the handprint on his side stayed real and warm. Pete choses to believe there's nothing out there cruel enough to leave him that hope if there isn't a chance. 

 

He prays, knelt down with his hands clasped together, because he figures if robots can come to life then maybe someone might be listening. 

 

***

 

“Did you try kissing him?” his mom says over the breakfast table. She's moved herself into the spare room and shows no sign of leaving. 

 

Pete goes dark red and tries to hide behind a cereal box. “Mom!” He has though. It was horrible and creepy and he apologised to Patrick, even though he wasn't listening. He only did it to try and bring him back, but it felt like some kind of violation. 

 

“It's not a Disney movie,” he says instead, and then goes upstairs. 

 

He's seeing more of his mom than he has since college, but they barely interact except to talk about Patrick. Without him, everything Pete has is being ripped apart. 

 

Pete troops up to his room, where Patrick's sprawled lifelessly on the chair. He looks up when he senses Pete entering. Pete lifts him up until Patrick's sitting in his lap, and loops his head over the robot's shoulder. 

“What are we going to do?” he says, the same bleak question he repeats every day. 

 

Where his fingers cover Patrick's, they twitch. Pete's head jerks up. 

“If you can hear me, squeeze my hand three times,” he says slowly. Nothing happens.

 

He’s about to scream at the stupid unfairness of this horrible teasing, when Patrick's head twitches from the neck, where it rests against Pete's shoulder. It's a small, effortful move. Only later does Pete realise that he's moving so his ear is making contact with Pete's skin. 

 

His hand twitches again. This time, it feels deliberate, insistent. 

“If you can hear me, squeeze my hand three times,” he repeats nervously. In the pause, Pete can hear his own heart beating. 

 

One, two… the last one is weak, but it's there. 

 

“Mom!”

 

***

 

It's Pete's mom who has the clever idea. She figures if Patrick's still in there, in his brain - she has Pete hold his head just to be safe, because he seems to wake up anywhere Pete touches - maybe he can send them a message. 

 

They argue over where exactly Pete should hold - Pete says the chip that contains Patrick's brain of sorts is actually in his back. Dale taps his plastic forehead and looks threatening as she insists that “He's in there.” Unsurprisingly, she wins. 

 

“Honey,” she says, as Pete cups Patrick's head, fingers across his ear because that seems to make him hear. “if you're in there, you can send Pete and I a message. Just open a new file, put it in… Pete?”

 

“If you can control it, put it in your text folder. You know the one I used to use to save passwords and stuff in?”

 

Dale nods and continues. “Save it in there, sweetie, but name it something we'll be able to search for if you can't get it there. Call it, Uh…” her eyes alight on a piece hanging on Pete's wall, an old french poster “Chat noir?”

 

***

 

Pete's heart is in his throat as he plugs the cable from Patrick's foot into his computer. He checks the text folder, but the last new document was made years ago. 

 

He feels sick as he brings up the search, and begins to type their agreed codeword. His shaky hands are halfway through noir when a dialogue message pops up on the screen. It takes his panicked brain nearly ten seconds to process it. 

 

When it says error report, open to view, Pete realises he was wrong thinking it couldn't get worse. Clinging-on robot Patrick is a lot better than virus ridden, utterly destroyed Patrick. 

 

He opens it, and a black screen with a flickering cursor comes up. Frowning, he waits. He blinks for a second and when he looks up the screen says: _ow._

 

He screams. “Patrick, you clever little fucker!” he yells, placing his fingers over Patrick's ear in case that helps. “I love you so much, you're so clever!”

He presses a kiss to the top of Patrick's nose for good measure. 

 

_I couldn't do any of the things you said. I thought if it was an error report, you'd definitely see it._

>

>

_I love you._

>

>

_That cord in my foot sort of hurts_

 

Pete takes a deep breath. It might be baby steps, but he kind of has Patrick back. 

 

 

“Are you okay?” he blurts, the first thing he thinks to say. “I mean… you're not, but-”

 

_I'm as ok as I can be in here_

>

>

_I want to get out. I miss you_

>

 _What if my brain comes back but the rest of me doesn't_  

>

 

Pete watches Patrick's thoughts playing across the screen with his lips pressed together so he doesn't cry. 

“Do you have any ideas how we can fix it?” he asks hopefully. 

 

_Your heart brought me to life the first time._

 

“But everything's different now! You're already alive! Your life is yours, and it's fucking unfair that you even have to rely on me at all. I feel like this is like trying to bring someone back to life by using their… midwife. Maybe I helped you come alive, but no one helped you be Patrick, and I want Patrick BACK!” he finishes on a petulant scream, towards whoever decided it would be fun to mess with Patrick's life like this. He pants, squishing his eyes shut. 

 

“I never apologised,” he says hollowly, his chest rising and falling. “I never apologised for what I said. Not really. I just… there's no point justifying it. I know what to say to hurt you so I said it. I wasn't sorry before because… I did mean to hurt you. I don't think I meant what I said, but I meant to way it made you bleed. You deserve my apology. You deserve your life back. You deserve-”

 

“I never apologised either,” Patrick says warmly. “I only didn't get you like you got me because I didn't have the ammunition you had. I acted like a baby, and I wasted four years of both our lives - cause, let's face it, neither of us are much when we're apart.”

Pete hears a laugh. It wasn't bitter. “I guess I deserve you.”

 

Pete leans forward instinctively to rest his forehead against Patrick’s. He knows before he opens his eyes that all he'll feel is empty plastic, but it's worth the comfort mechanism. 

 

He feels a hand pull in his collar, and wheels in his brain start to turn. 

“Wait. You spoke. I had my eyes closed, but you definitely-” 

 

Pete has seen Patrick's eyes too-big and china bright. He has seen them red-rimmed and crinkled up with happiness. Recently, he's seen them far too much, almost right but painfully wrong, eager and fake. 

 

He is certain he's definitely qualified to know when they are real. And the eyes blinking back at him in matching surprise to his own are… real. 

 

Patrick smiles. 

 

***

 

“I think it's like… a shield, you know?” Patrick is saying. He seems remarkably unfazed by the fact that he just got returned to life. Pete has barely stopped crying in the last two hours. 

 

“What do you mean, sweetie?” Dale asks, rubbing his shoulders. His body is a patchwork of plastic and skin, but his beautiful crystal eyes always have and always will be enough to make Pete feel alive again. When he rubs his nose, forgetting about the sharp plastic of his right hand, he wrinkles his nose cutely in surprise.

 

“The place I was in after I stopped touring… it wasn't an easy one. If there's machinery inside me going to work behind the scenes, it's like going up a really steep hill and just grinding to a holt. My life stopped meaning anything, my heart literally stopped beating.”

 

“You wanted to be numb, so you were,” Pete supplies helpfully. 

 

Patrick nods. “It's not- You were awesome, obviously. But it's just, like, you never apologised. And it's not like you coming back and saying sorry fixed my whole life, but that's the big root of everything. When we apologised and let go of everything I needed, it gave me the strength to deal with all the other crap in my life, I guess.”

 

With the hand that's not made of plastic, Patrick squeezes Pete’s hand. 

“I had a lot of healing to do,” he says quietly. Looking up at Pete, there's a spark in his eyes. “I mean, you did too. But luckily for you, your body doesn't have the capability to turn into plastic in a warped attempt to make you deal with your emotions.”

 

“It's lucky for me yours does that enough for both of us.” Pete watches Patrick blush as Pete kisses his cheek in front of Dale. 

 

“I'm so happy to see your smile again, Ricky,” Dale adds, and Pete can see the past few weeks of worry leaving her face. “I know you can't be happy that you… didn't all turn back, but you have almost all of your face, and it's definitely something we can cover up with some well placed makeup.”

 

She nudges Patrick like she's waiting for him to say something. With a deep breath he flutters his golden eyelashes nervously at Pete. “I know. So I could. If I wanted to, I could be in public again. I could go on stage.” He presses his lips together, shyly hiding the half of his face where his cheekbone is slightly too hard and shiny to be real in Pete's shoulder. 

“I know it's soon. We've all been through a lot, we've only really been reconciled with me conscious for a few days…”

 

Dale gives him an encouraging nod as he pauses. It seems to give him the nerve to continue on. “I… I want the band back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're almost there! The final chapter will just be tying lose ends and showing their relationship and the band, and another complication Patrick discovers, so prompts and anything you want to see are welcome! Im not sure which hand is the plastic hand/hook in the ybc and irresistible etc, but I made it be his right so he can still play guitar with his right fingers and and strum holding a pick.


	10. Chapter 10

Patrick's on the plane. Pete is antsy, because is the first time Patrick's been away overnight since he sort of turned into a fucking robot. 

 

There was a night where there was some crazy accident and he was delayed until the early hours of the morning, but he hasn't been the whole three days of this trip to go to a friend's wedding. 

 

He's on the plane when he calls Pete. 

“Don't freak out,” he says quickly, before Pete can remind him that he's not supposed to use a phone on a plane, “There's internet, I'm calling with that. Um, can you come pick me up from the airport?”

 

Pete pauses thoughtfully. “Baby, it's not that I don't want to see you. But you know I'm meant to-”

 

“Don't freak out!” Patrick yelps, for the second time in as many minutes, turning on facetime. “Don't freak out,” he repeats, watching Pete's face drop. 

 

Patrick's eyes are glassy in more than a metaphorical sense, and his face is marred with a plastic sheen. His hair has the same opaque quality Pete remembers from last month. Pete opens his mouth to say something, but Patrick does that thing where he pulls his mouth into a tight line and narrows his eyes and Pete would have to be really fearless to ignore him. 

 

“It's fine. I didn't want to tell you because you'd freak out, but it kind of happened before. I think it's when I leave Chicago without you… I haven't figured it out, but I'll be back to normal as soon as I'm home. You didn't even notice before.”

 

Pete can think of so many things to say. “When does your flight get in?” he asks instead. 

 

 

***

 

With his hoodie pulled over his head and his eyes looking desperately for Pete as he hurries through the crowded airport, Patrick is easy to find. He launches himself into Pete's arms and buries his face there for a few moments. Pete has no problem holding him tightly until he steps back with a little cough. 

 

He seems to be avoiding Pete's gaze, probably because he's shy about his flat glass eyes and matte skin. “I was a little scared back there,” he admits, biting his bottom lip, which is the only thing still soft and real in the rest of his face. “Like if someone was going to notice, or if the plane got delayed and I was limping again…”

 

“Hush,” Pete smiles, rubbing his fingers along Patrick's face like he can bring the skin back that quickly. “You're safe now. Although, I'm pretty pissed you didn't tell me.”

 

Patrick just shrugs, and Pete senses it's a touchy subject, although that doesn't stop him from anxiously questioning Patrick even more. 

“How bad is it?” he enquiries grimly, a careful hand on Patrick's waist. 

 

Patrick doesn't seem to be capable of words just now - he waves his hand vaguely in the air and indicates his arms and torso and one of his feet, too. 

“Fuck! Why didn't you tell me, you idiot? How long did it take to happen like this? Will it be long before it goes away? Do you think this is going to happen a lot?”

 

As though Pete's just an overly curious paparazzi, Patrick waves his arms irritably. “Pete, chill. It'll go away now you're close. I can still tour, or whatever it is that's got your ass so messed up.”

 

Pete scowls. “Chill? CHILL? Patrick, you do fucking remember that time I came to your house three months ago and you were a robot, right? You don't know what it was like, losing my best friend, losing my boyfriend, to some meep-morp-zeep! Unless I'm just overreacting and it's just nothing to you that that happened.”

 

Patrick looks like he wants to make a point about how it was shitty for him too - he's the one who actually was a brainless tin can - but that would only prove Pete's point that it is A Big Deal, so he clamps his mouth shut and goes for the defensive. 

 

“I missed you,” he whines, pulling the sleeves of the sweater he stole from Pete over his hands. His blue eyes widen innocently but he can't hold back the devious smile. They both know Pete is a sitting duck when Patrick goes all soft like this, the way he never does unless he wants something. 

 

“Stop,” Pete laughs, covering his face like he's looking at the sun, “Your eyes are getting dangerously large. Doesn't that hurt?”

 

“I can't actually feel most of my face right now, so.” Patrick's tone is cool but he grabs for Pete's hand and nervously yanks the hood of his sweater lower when they go outside of the terminal, just in case they see anyone, or anyone sees them. 

 

***

 

“Patrick has something to tell you,” Pete says pointedly, which earns him a scowl from Patrick.

Joe looks unimpressed. “You're banging Pete? We know.”

 

Patrick opens his mouth like a really cute fish. “No. Well I- NO. Well-” he looks at Pete frantically, who is laughing behind his hand. Of course, he'd told anyone who'd listen, and plenty of people who really didn't want to listen, as soon as he could. “I'm not banging him…” Patrick manages pathetically, trying to figure out what to say. 

 

“Well you're not not banging him,” Joe argues, but Patrick goes red with anger and the guitarist shuts his mouth before Patrick explodes. 

 

“It's more than that,” he grunts, ever uncomfortable at having to talk about his relationships with anyone but the person he's in the relationship with. Groaning, he shakes his head quickly. “But anyway, no. I didn't want to tell you that. For this exact reason. Besides, it's none of your business,” he says, but his glare is aimed at Pete and not Joe. 

 

Andy interrupts with a yawn - he was up late last night with Patrick, tracking drums and arguing about it every step of the way until Andy conceded, secretly planning to play it his way as soon as they hit the road. It seems weird, and Pete realises suddenly that he can probably count the number of times on his fingers that he's seen Andy yawn. 

 

Patrick sighs, the redness draining from his face and the anger that gave him confidence shifting into nervousness. Feeling his anxiety, Pete slips his hand into Patrick's. Because of how they're positioned - Patrick standing while Pete sits - he has to drop his hand away when his arm gets tired. 

 

“I didn't want to tell you this either… I never needed to, some, Uh, complications have arisen, and you guys should hear it from me in case you find out another way.”

 

“Babe, you're making it sound like you're pregnant with siamese twins,” Pete whispers helpfully. Patrick scowls at him, and Pete remembers he doesn't like pet names in public.

 

Patrick bites his lip. It's an awkward speech to start, but he doesn't want to jump in without enough of a convincing introduction that they give him the chance to prove himself before they think he's crazy. He looks at Pete with panic in his eyes, and Pete slips the photos into his hands and smiles encouragingly. 

 

“I… Do you remember when there was that dodgy firm experimenting with like dodgy biotechnology that all went down in like 2007?” he blurts, realising they probably don't and not giving them a chance to answer before he continues. “I mean, you probably don't, but Pete does. Because his dad worked there. He wasn't a lawyer, he was an engineer, but it was super confidential so he had to have this fake job-”

 

“Patrick, why are you telling us this if it's Pete's dad?” Andy says slowly. 

 

Patrick stomps his foot, making Pete grin at how much like his 18 year old self he still is sometimes. “You'll see! Just let me talk. Okay, so remember when I showed you that picture of me as a kid, and a robot they found on record of that company that everyone was saying looked like me?”

 

He shows them both the pictures that Pete had printed out for him, and Joe nods hesitantly while Andy just looks thoughtful. 

 

“Okay, well, this is the really crazy part. I'm just going to show you some pictures,” he says nervously, holding out his shaky hand with the pictures. Pete and robot Patrick on Patrick's birthday, Pete and real Patrick multiple times throughout their childhood, and a selfie he'd taken quickly as proof when he got off the plane in Chicago last. 

 

As they're looking through the pictures Patrick is trembling with nerves, robotically reciting the facts. 

“Pete's dad made me as a birthday present for him when he was a kid. I was like that for a few years, and then… I just… came to life,” he says nervously. That's the really unbelievable part, the part he doesn't know if anyone who wasn't there will believe. 

 

He glances at Pete for encouragement to see him making an agreeing face to back up what Patrick is saying. Hopefully the fact that they're both agreeing makes it more believable.

 

 “I don't have a family. I grew up staying with Pete and his mom. That's pictures of me and Pete when we were kids to, uh, show you that. We managed to hide everything, make it look like we met through Joe like you thought, just to avoid any suspicion.”

 

Patrick isn't sure if it would be worse if they didn't believe him, or if they did believe him but saw him as some kind of android that wasn't really… real. 

“Pete… I feel sick,” he whines quietly, backing away from his friends to bury his face in Pete's arms, still shaking madly.

 

Pete strokes his hair, letting him relax as he addresses their speechless friends. “We never told you because their was no point. Don't be mad, because we both love you guys a lot but if was a totally pointless risk in a lot of ways and we would've been stupid to tell anyone. Patrick's actual safety is more important than anything. I'm sorry we didn't tell you, but we couldn't.”

 

Patrick nods from where he's curled up, small and pale in Pete's lap. He looks pleading and apologetic. 

 

“So you're… a robot?” Joe gapes. He looks like he can't believe what he's saying, but he flicks through all the photo evidence in his hands and looks stunned. “I… wow. I can't believe this but - and Pete's backing you up so this isn't some kind of delusion and- fuck, a robot?”

 

“I'm not a robot,” Patrick says stubbornly, full of pride for someone Pete can feel violently shaking as he speaks, “I used to be. I'm not anymore.”

Pete rubs his back gently to calm him down. 

 

“Come on, you guys, you know Patrick,” Pete adds pleadingly. “You've known him forever. He's just the same dude as always.”

 

Patrick turns his head to look up at Pete, who realises suddenly how adorable he looks, nestled up in Pete's shirt like a baby bunny. 

 

“Oh, except now he kinda starts turning back sometimes? We haven't figured it out exactly, but I think it's when he's not around me and maybe sometimes when he's sad…”

 

Patrick tries to hide himself under his hat, but seems to change his mind and look up. “So… if I do anything weird, you guys know about it now I guess. And, um, please don't get any water near me, especially my foot.”

 

He takes of his little sock (his feet are so tiny and cute, Pete notices) and runs his finger across the little socket on his heel. He jumps back in shock when Andy reaches out to touch it too. 

 

“I almost didn't believe you until that,” he admits. “I mean, it's crazy. But I don't think anyone would let you do that to your foot for a prank, so.”

 

“I'm just a normal person,” Patrick repeats by way of response.

 

“Well, not that normal, I mean. You're letting Pete Wentz bone you…”

 

***

 

Pete strokes Patrick's hair and kisses his cheek, still a little sweaty from the dingy rock club. It was something they could've played ten years ago - that's why they chose it.

 “Good to be back?” he asks fondly. “Man, can you imagine what we would be thinking ten years ago if we could see ourselves now?”

 

“Damn, we were babies,” Joe agrees cheerfully. “What's two hundred and fifty four cubed?” he adds quickly, and Patrick blurts out the answer before anyone else has even processed the question. 

 

“Sixteen million, three hundred and eighty-seven thousand and sixty-four. Wait, what? Oh, you asshole!” he shouts in quick succession. Pete takes a sip of beer and feels like he's travelled back in time as he watches the shorter boy launch himself at Joe. 

 

“I knew it,” Joe shrieks. “You used to charge me ten dollars to do my math homework, and now I know it only took you three seconds. I've been conned… our whole friendship is a lie!”

 

“Fall Out Boy is back,” Andy says sarcastically, once again regretting being the only sober one amongst three drunk idiots. 

 

 


End file.
